Renewable hydrogen set to be injected into Sydney grid

Could renewable energy be piped into our homes to power our cooktops, hot water services and barbeques via our existing natural gas network?

The theory says it is possible.

And thanks to a new trial announced today, NSW gas distributor Jemena is one step closer to making it a reality.

ARENA is providing $7.5 million in funding for Jemena to build a demonstration scale ‘power-to-gas’ electrolyser in western Sydney.

Powered by energy from the sun and wind, the new 500kW electrolyser will inject renewable ‘green’ hydrogen into Sydney’s natural gas grid.

Jemena’s trial will inject hydrogen into the natural gas grid

Hydrogen created will be entirely free of emissions, releasing only water vapour at the point of use.

When blended with natural gas, experts advise that hydrogen can be safely tolerated by existing infrastructure and appliances at concentrations of up to 10 per cent – and potentially much higher.

The $15 million trial promises to create the largest working example of an electrolyser in Australia.

If scaled, power-to-gas hydrogen technology could help green the gas network, supplementing and replacing our natural gas with carbon free hydrogen generated by soaking up surplus electricity generated by wind and solar.

ARENA CEO Darren Miller said power-to-gas technology could be a valuable use for excess energy from renewables on very sunny or windy days.

“As more and more renewables are built, there will be days when we will need to find uses for large amounts of excess energy,” Darren Miller said.

“Hydrogen could play an important role storing energy to stabilise the grid, as well as reducing the carbon intensity of the gas network,” he said.

As part of the trial, a portion of hydrogen produced will be diverted to a gas engine generator to generate electricity generation to be exported back into the grid, with the remaining stored for use in an onsite refuelling station for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

The project aims to help overcome the economic, technical and regulatory barriers to widespread use of hydrogen within the gas network as a carrier of renewable energy, as well as reduce emissions associated with the use of natural gas.

Hydrogen close to realising long-held potential

Long-hailed as a fuel of the future, hydrogen is enjoying a moment in the sun as countries around the world look to reduce their carbon emissions.

Japan is one country investing heavily in hydrogen technology to meet their future energy needs, setting the ambitious goal creating a ‘hydrogen society’ in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

While today most hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels, work is underway to bring down the costs of electrolyser technology and power the process with renewables.

The researchers are working to unlock innovations at each point in the hydrogen export supply chain – from production, to energy carriers and end use.

Jemena’s Managing Director Frank Tudor said power-to-gas technology could allow renewable energy to be stored for later use.

“In the future Australians will need to decide what to do with excess renewable energy on very windy or very sunny days,” Frank Tudor said.

“Jemena’s Project H2GO will demonstrate how existing gas pipeline technology can store excess renewable energy for weeks and months, making it more efficient than batteries which can only store excess renewable energy for minutes or hours,” he said.

With demand for hydrogen as an emissions free fuel to compliment natural gas, Jemena is looking to overcome the barriers to a widespread rollout of green hydrogen.

As well as demonstrating that the technology stacks up, there is a work to be done before hydrogen can replace natural gas in our household appliances.

But with 25,000 of gas pipelines in NSW alone, the capacity to store vast quantities of renewable energy in existing infrastructure is enormous.

Hydrogen to be trialled in NSW gas networks

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) today announced it would fund a trial to produce hydrogen using renewable energy and inject it into the Sydney gas network.

On behalf of the Australian Government, ARENA has committed $7.5 million in funding for Jemena to build a demonstration scale 500 kW electrolyser at its facility in western Sydney.

The $15 million project – known as Project H2GO – will connect to Jemena’s existing gas network which delivers gas to 1.3 million customers in New South Wales.

Hydrogen can be safely added to the natural gas mains at concentrations of up to 10 per cent without affecting pipelines, appliances or regulations.

The two-year trial —the largest of its kind in Australia — involves converting solar and wind power into renewable hydrogen via electrolysis; the process by which electricity is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The electrolyser will produce hydrogen to be stored in the natural gas network to demonstrate and address the technical, regulatory, environmental and economic barriers to the production and use of hydrogen in various Australian conditions.

The majority of the hydrogen produced will be injected in the local gas network for domestic use and demonstrate the potential for renewable hydrogen storage in Australia’s gas networks.

A portion of the hydrogen will be utilised via a gas engine generator for electricity generation back into the grid with the remaining stored for use in an onsite Hydrogen Refuelling Station for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

“As Australia transitions to renewable energy, hydrogen could play an important role as energy storage and also has the effect of decarbonising the gas network with ‘green’ gas,” he said.

Energy Networks Australia identified hydrogen injection into the natural gas network as an avenue to decarbonise the gas distribution networks. Jemena’s trial will support future activities around the production and storage of renewable hydrogen at larger scales.

“There is significant potential in the power-to-gas value chain including the ability to stabilise the grid as well as pairing renewable energy with electrolysers to soak up and store surplus electricity,” Mr Miller said.

In the longer term, hydrogen also has the potential to be a major Australian export opportunity. Earlier this month, ARENA announced $22 million in R&D funding into exporting hydrogen, supporting 16 research projects across nine Australian universities and research organisations.

ARENA recently published a report, prepared by ACIL Allen, which identified export opportunities for Australia as global demand for renewable hydrogen increases. ARENA is also part of the Hydrogen Strategy Group, chaired by Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel AO, that is working with the COAG Energy Council.

Jemena’s Managing Director Frank Tudor said Power to Gas technology could allow us to storage renewable energy to make it dispatchable.

“In the future Australians will need to decide what to do with excess renewable energy on very windy or very sunny days. Jemena’s Project H2GO will demonstrate how existing gas pipeline technology can store excess renewable energy for weeks and months, making it more efficient than batteries which can only store excess renewable energy for minutes or hours,” he said.

Jemena Power to Gas Demonstration

ARENA awards $22 million to unlock hydrogen potential

In recent weeks, the buzz around the potential for hydrogen to unlock opportunities to export renewable energy to the world has gone from a light murmur to a loud hum.

Reports by the Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s Hydrogen Strategy Group and consultants ACIL Allen have confirmed that an export market is emerging, driven by growing demand from countries like Japan and South Korea that are reliant on energy imports.

Late last month, over 350 delegates gathered in Perth for a conference on renewable hydrogen, and the COAG Energy Council have asked for a proposal on a national hydrogen strategy.

ARENA is funding research to turn all this potential into a productive industry, this week awarding a pool of $22.1 million to 16 research teams across nine universities and research institutions.

Their work is setting out to unlock innovations at each point in the hydrogen export supply chain – from production, to energy carriers and end use.

For highly populated nations with small landmasses, importing energy is a fact of life. Today imports mean fossil fuels.

Global efforts to reduce emissions are a double-edged sword for Australia. As a world-leading exporter of coal and gas we stand to lose from the transition away from fossil fuels, but our broad landmass is also rich with the wind and sun needed to produce renewable zero-emissions hydrogen.

ARENA CEO Darren Miller said the $22.1 million funding boost will help Australian scientists unlock our next big export industry.

“With our abundance of sun and wind, as well as experience as one of the world’s largest LNG exporters, we are well placed to become a global superpower in exporting renewable energy,” Darren Miller said.

“Before that can happen there is work to do developing hydrogen technology to be viable on an export scale.

“Japan and South Korea have already committed to becoming major import markets for hydrogen, but as yet there are no exporters.

“Given we are in competition with other countries that also want to export hydrogen, now is the time to unlock the innovations needed to capture a share of the market,” he said.

One funding recipient – the CSIRO – have received $1.01 million to develop a solid oxide electrolyser than can turn solar power into renewable fuels.

CSIRO Senior Research Scientist Dr Ani Kulkarni identifies two main issues to overcome before a large-scale hydrogen economy can be deployed.

“One is cost effective production of hydrogen, and second is the transportation of hydrogen from place A to place B,” Dr Ani Kulkarni said.

Dr Kulkarni says their project will break down barriers and allow regions with little access to renewable energy to benefit from solar and wind power.

“This is, as we say, a game-changing technology which provides a solution for both [issues] – economical production of hydrogen from renewable energy, and its conversion into liquid fuel carriers.

Dr Kulkarni predicts that the technology could reach the market within six to seven years and points out the strength of hydrogen to replace fossil fuels.

The CSIRO are partnering with five partners to deliver the project, including Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Northwestern University, British sustainable technology supplier Johnson Matthey, Raygen Resources and ADME Fuels.

Professor Doug Macfarlane’s Monash University team received $920,000 to develop scalable prototypes to produce ammonia from renewable energy.

“Ammonia as a liquid material can be moved around very easily, it’s a well-established transportation technology because it’s the base of all fertilisers,” Professor Macfarlane said.

“The challenge is to make ammonia from renewables. Currently ammonia is made from fossil fuels – mostly natural gas – and while it’s clear how one could conceptualise making ammonia from electricity, it’s never really been done until recent years.”

“What we discovered at Monash three years ago was a process based on a special type of ionic compound that dissolves very large quantities of nitrogen and therefore allows the process to run very efficiently.

“We’ve demonstrated that at a small laboratory scale and this project is going to allow us to scale that up at a larger and more efficient scale,” he explained.

Professor Macfarlane explains that a lot of work needs to be done to make the carrier technology ‘commercial ready’ within their three year timeline given the massive scale of the potential hydrogen export industry.

“The scale up involved is enormous – therefore the information needed by the chemical engineering design engineers to see how that’s going to work at massive scale. There’s a lot of information that they’re going to need to absorb into their designs.”

“Part of our job is to provide that sort of information,” he added.

ARENA’s $22.1 million hydrogen research and development funding round will be shared amongst sixteen separate research projects at the Australian National University, Macquarie University, Monash University, Queensland University of Technology, RMIT University, The University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales, The University of Western Australia and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

ARENA identified exporting renewables including hydrogen as one of the agency’s four investment priorities in May 2017.

In September, ARENA put out a Request for Information on renewable hydrogen to test the market. The Request for Information received 45 responses including on renewable energy projects, hydrogen fuel carriers and supply chains.

Off the back of the RFI, ARENA announced the R&D funding round in December last year.

Boosting research into exporting renewable hydrogen

On behalf of the Australian Government, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) today announced it has awarded $22.1 million in funding to 16 research projects to propel innovation in exporting renewable hydrogen to the world.

The funding has been offered to research teams from nine Australian universities and research organisations including the Australian National University, Macquarie University, Monash University, Queensland University of Technology, RMIT University, The University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales, The University of Western Australia and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

In December 2017, ARENA announced the funding round into hydrogen R&D. It is the first time ARENA had sought to fund research into the hydrogen energy supply chain.

The early stage research projects cover a diverse range of renewable solutions, with at least one project from each point in the supply chain – production, hydrogen carrier and end use. The projects include the development of a wide range of hydrogen-related technologies including concentrating solar thermal, electrolysis, biotechnology, carrier synthesis, thermochemical processes, fuel cell development and energy generation.

Hydrogen is poised to play a larger role, as the world moves to a low carbon economy. Hydrogen can potentially be used as a way for Australia to export renewable energy to other countries, particularly in Asia with demand expected to increase.

Earlier this month, ARENA also released a report that identified opportunities for Australia to export hydrogen as global demand for hydrogen increases in the next decade.

The report, prepared by ACIL Allen Consulting for ARENA, found there could be a significant increase in demand globally for hydrogen exports as other countries – such as Japan and the Republic of Korea – looked to transition to renewable energy. With the right conditions, hydrogen exports could be worth $1.7 billion annually and could generate 2,800 jobs in Australia by 2030.
ARENA is also part of the Hydrogen Strategy Group, led by Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel AO, which prepared a briefing paper on hydrogen for the COAG Energy Council.

ARENA CEO Darren Miller said the $22.1 million funding boost would help to maximise Australia’s opportunities in developing a cost-effective hydrogen export supply chain.

“Exporting renewable energy, such as by the use of hydrogen, involves developing and integrating emerging technologies. This funding will help bolster the research efforts of Australian scientists to drive innovation for what could become the next big export industry.

“Hydrogen is poised to play a big role in the world’s low carbon economy. Already, Japan and South Korea have committed to becoming major import markets for renewable hydrogen but as yet there are no exporters,” Mr Miller said.

“With its abundance of sun and wind, and experience as one of the world’s largest LNG exporters, Australia is ideally placed to become a global superpower in exporting renewable energy, and this work will help position us as leaders in this field,” he said.